History of the Fishing and Fisheries Research Centre

The Fishing & Fisheries (F&F) team was formed in 1994 as part of CRC Reef. It has developed to become a well established team with a reputation for providing stakeholder driven tropical fisheries research.

The F&F team has an outstanding record of multi-disciplinary collaborative fisheries research and information delivery to fisheries stakeholders and has established a leading role in tropical fisheries research in Queensland and Torres Strait.

A major research project which facilitated the formation of the F&F team was the ground-breaking Effects of Line Fishing (ELF) Experiment which began in 1994 and continued until June 30, 2006. This experiment was (and still is) a world-first in respect to its size (spread over 1500 km of the GBR), its duration (over 10 years of sampling) and design (at the scale of entire reefs). Much of the fisheries research information currently used by fisheries managers of Queensland’s reef line fishery has been provided through the ELF Experiment and its associated research. The vast quantity of information derived from this project has already been included in two major management plans affecting the reef line fishery and the GBR Marine Park.

A major tool developed through the ELF Project has been a management strategy evaluation simulation model (ELFSim) that in the last few years has been further improved with the incorporation of social and economic data. In association with stakeholders, ELFSim has already been a valuable tool for assessment of coral trout populations on the GBR and their response to alternative management strategies, and is currently being developed to be used in the assessment of other important reef species.

For more detail on previous Fishing and fisheries projects, please go to the CRC Reef webpage and publications page.